The American Secret Service have launched an investigation into one of the candidates for the presidency in 2008 – after he pledged that as President, one of his first acts would be to impale President George W. Bush.

The candidate in question is Jonathon ‘The Impaler’ Sharkey, and he is running as the only self-described satanic vampire candidate who has so far entered the 2008 race.

Sharkey’s pledge to impale President Bush, he makes clear, will only come into effect if he is actually elected to office.

But that has still triggered action by the Secret Service, who say they have a duty to investigate any threats against the president. Sharkey, 42, says that agents from the service visited him at home with his 19-year-old wife, Spree, to investigate his impaling pledge.

Sharkey told The Columbia Chronicle about the visit: ‘They were telling me, when they were interrogating me, that their job was to protect Bush even after he’s out of office. I’m looking at them like, “Oh, you’re going to defy me when I become president?”’

Sharkey previously ran for President in 2004, and has run for Congress several time, occasionally as a Republican.

Darrin Blackford, a spokesman for the Secret Service, disagreed that the investigation was an over-reaction: ‘Unfortunately, in our line of work, we can’t take that chance.’

But a legal expert is unsure if a case could be made against The Impaler. ‘Under the First Amendment, what it boils down to here is whether or not he’s a vampire who wants to impale the president,’ law professor Neil Richards of Washington University in St. Louis told the Chronicle.

‘I guess the question is, if he’s a vampire, why is he the one staking people? Shouldn’t he want to bite the president and feed on him?’ added Richards, describing these questions as ‘perhaps further evidence that this is not a true threat.’

Sharkey, meanwhile, seems unconcerned about the investigation. If anything, he feels that the Secret Service may not be taking him seriously enough.